Catholic Reaction, Second Period : The Spanish Marriage (1553 I554)

In these changes the English people readily acquiesced. Probably, thus far, the majority was in very general accord with the policy of the government, and greeted the return to the old forms with satisfaction. Had Mary stopped here, all might have been well; but her own inclination, the advice of Charles V, and the urging of the pope, demanded that the work not only of Edward VI, but also of Henry VIII, be undone, and that England return to the position which she had occupied before the separation from Rome.

But before Mary could carry out the details of her policy, she had to meet the question of her own marriage, and in her decision lay an important test of the situation. Charles V proposed his son as her husband; and Philip, the son, thinking to control England and to gain possession of its revenues, indicated his willingness to marry the queen, although she was ten years his senior. Notwithstanding the fact that Parliament asked her to choose an English husband, and not a foreigner, Mary disregarded its wishes, and dissolved that body as a rebuke for its interference.

Many of the English took the queen's decision as an affront, while others, knowing the character of Philip, feared lest the marriage should be but a prelude to an entire restoration of the authority of the pope.

QUEEN MARY.

From an engraving by Vertue, based on " a picture in possession of the Rt. Honble. the Earl of Oxford."

Insurrections took place in Devonshire and Cornwall, led by Sir Peter Carew; in Coventry, led by the earl of Suffolk; in Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Of these, the last only proved formidable. Wyatt, at the head of fifteen thousand men, advanced on London; but Mary, with true Tudor courage, threw herself on the loyalty of the Londoners, and Wyatt found the city closed against him. He was seized and executed. The uprisings hardened the queen's heart. Feeling the need of securing her throne by putting out of the way all enemies and claimants, she caused not only Wyatt and Suffolk to be executed, but also Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Guilford Dudley. The era of mercy and moderation was past; Elizabeth herself was saved from the block only because the queen and the Catholic party dared not put her to death.

In 1554 Mary married Philip, and after the marriage, summoned a new and more subservient parliament, in order to complete the work of reaction. This body forbade the marriage of priests, revived the acts punishing heretics, and then, in one great act of repeal, abolished eighteen statutes of Henry VIII, thus restoring the church, its form and worship, to the position it had occupied at the accession of Henry VIII. It also authorized entire submission to Rome, but stubbornly refused to restore the lands which had been taken from the monasteries and abbeys. The pope, Julius III, glad of the return of England to the fold of the church, waived the matter of the church lands, and sent Cardinal Pole as papal legate to England. It was perhaps the happiest day of Mary's life when she and Philip, and both houses of parliament, knelt before the legate, and received from him absolution and a complete restoration "to the communion of the holy church."